Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: zahc on August 17, 2010, 10:44:45 PM
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Incidentally videoing police officer in a public place during traffic stop--illegal wiretapping.
Remotely activating webcams to spy on dozens/hundreds of school age children in the privacy of their bedrooms without their consent--not wiretapping.
Isn't it obvious how quaint is becoming the idea of equality under the law?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-08-17-laptop-spying_N.htm
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The Hell!?
I thought these administrators were going to get smacked around for this bullcrap. Now, they know they can get away with it. The pervs are rejoicing...
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mens rea
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Mens rea is an antiquated and much-forgotten concept for many criminal cases, why not this one? [popcorn]
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I assume a civil suit is still going forward? (amazing how kiddie porn is OK if you work for the .gov, but it's worse than murder if you don't)
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Incidentally videoing police officer in a public place during traffic stop--illegal wiretapping.
They ruled that it was illegal wiretapping?
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They ruled that it was illegal wiretapping?
Yeah, the judge threw that charge out the very next day after the cops arrested him for it. Stated quite simply that she could not see in any way that the video taping was wiretapping.
Still doesn't change how effed up this is though.
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the very next day
er no
and hes still facing those charges direct indictment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK5bMSyJCsg
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/08/06/maryland-attorney-general-sides-with-anthony-graber/ he might beat the wiretap charges but hes toast on the career limiting other charges. great stuff when you post your own video for them to use against you
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the very next day
er no
and hes still facing those charges direct indictment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK5bMSyJCsg
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/08/06/maryland-attorney-general-sides-with-anthony-graber/ he might beat the wiretap charges but hes toast on the career limiting other charges. great stuff when you post your own video for them to use against you
It would seem I misremembered the quote, he was released from jail the day after he was arrested for "wiretapping" during which time: “The judge who released me looked at the paperwork and said she didn’t see where I violated the wiretapping law.”
http://carlosmiller.com/2010/04/16/maryland-motorcyclist-spends-26-hours-in-jail-on-wiretapping-charge-for-filming-cop-with-gun/
I thought they had dismissed the wiretapping charges at that time.
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Note: I'm NOT advocating violence here, but posing a question.
Fathers:
If a gov employee can take [nekkid] pictures of your underage daughter, on a laptop she's REQUIRED to have, and there's [apparentlly] no legal means to stop him, why not just shoot him?
Or on a broader scale;
Folks are told not to take the law into their own hands (except in the most extreme cases), but to call the police and let the courts handle it. At what point does the "courts handling it" get so far out of touch with society's expectations and mores that that's no longer an acceptable choice. And what happens then?
I would have thought that surrepitous recording of your minor children in your own home would have been obviously across the line of right vs. wrong. Apparently, the courts and I disagree there.
ETA:
mens rea
Yeah like the mens rea evident when a 15yo girl sends a topless pic to her boyfriend.
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. . . he might beat the wiretap charges but hes toast on the career limiting other charges. great stuff when you post your own video for them to use against you
I don't think ANYONE defended cycleboy's reckless motorcycling - he ought to get a lot of points on his license and it should cost him some serious $$$. (Does MD use a point system for moving violations?)
But the "wiretapping" charges, police raid, etc., are so much bovine excrement and the cop shouldn't have pulled a gun - probably not at all, but certainly not without identifying himself; he should've been holding up his badge instead.
A fair part of this appears to be police and prosecutorial misconduct - and they (meaning the individuals involved) ought to suffer some consequences as well.
. . . At what point does the "courts handling it" get so far out of touch with society's expectations and mores that that's no longer an acceptable choice. And what happens then?
Vigilantism.
And that can get out of hand so fast that it won't benefit anyone. =(
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Vigilantism.
And that can get out of hand so fast that it won't benefit anyone. =(
In my darker, more introspective moments, that is what worries me.
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You wouldn't be the first or the last, just be prepared for the bureaucracy to go after you harder than they do any criminal.
The history channel occasionally does a show on the history of vigilantism in the US. There has been quite a bit and that was just the documented stuff.
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You wouldn't be the first or the last, just be prepared for the bureaucracy to go after you harder than they do any criminal.
I remember when a guy was murdering black children in Atlanta . . . oh, it must be 30 years ago by now. The police were ineffective in stopping him, so the parents started doing things like walking their kids to school or waiting with them at the school bus stops while carrying baseball bats. Neighborhoods were organizing so if one parent was unavailable, others would cover - they wanted to protect their children, whether it was on the way to school, at the library, playing neigborhood baseball games, whatever.
How did officialdom respond? Reports at the time had it that the police expended more effort harassing the anxious "vigilante" parents then then did looking for the killer.
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That steams me.
On a related note, I woke up today to the radio telling me about a man in Oklahoma that reported his wife missing when she and his truck were gone for a couple days, with no notice.
4 days and an expensive (wo)manhunt later, she was found in Corpus Christi, TX, shacked up with some other guy.
The huband got a bill for (undisclosed) tens of thousands of dollars for the cost of the (wo)manhunt, and the woman got arrested for unauthorized use of another person's vehicle. Unknown if the auto title had both of their names on it or not, or the insurance... but whatever.
I become more and more convinced that I really don't need to use the police to resolve any problems in my life.
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Vigilantism.
And that can get out of hand so fast that it won't benefit anyone. =(
I still do wonder how we as a society got to the point were vigilantism is considered a bad thing. Probably about the time dueling went out of favor. We can see how well that turned out. Now personal disputes are handled strictly through an arbitrary, often corrupt and always expensive legal system governed by a set of laws that completely redefines byzantine and is impossible for ANY human to understand. Gee, what progress.
Re the article... From what I understand, the feds somehow grabbed the case and then declined to prosecute even though it was virtually gift wrapped for them. Hopefully, we can grab it back down to the state level and prosecute the hell out of them. The point is not just to make these people pay for their crimes. The most important part is to never allow them to ever be in a position to do so again. A felony conviction is the ONLY way to do so. Otherwise, this will all blow over eventually, they will move to some other school and continue their actions. The parents are still going nuts and AFAIK, the civil suit is basically a slam dunk. Likely be settled out of court, unfortunately.
A lot of folks are displeased. We recently had two judges sending kids to hell camps for crimes they did not commit. Now this? No. We are sorting out the judges. We WOULD have dealt with this if it wasn't for the feds directly trying to shelter pervs and tyrants just because they receive a government paycheck. But I suppose that is their job, right?
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Well, if the TSA can do it, why not schools? ;/
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Re the article... From what I understand, the feds somehow grabbed the case and then declined to prosecute even though it was virtually gift wrapped for them.
With the amount of surreptitious electronic surveillance being conducted by the alphabet agencies does it really surprise you that they are declining to set a precedent at the Federal court level against such things? USSID 18 has been all but gutted by various "anti-terrorism" laws.
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I still do wonder how we as a society got to the point were vigilantism is considered a bad thing.
+1
Particularly re domesic violence/ongoing threats to the safety of vulnerable people. Of course, it's not entirely gone. Friend of mine is a good shot and a future prosecutor.
Her sister is still alive because her brother in law knows how good of a shot she is, not because of the prosecutor.
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Just because no one else has said it yet, "But it is for the children!" :facepalm: [popcorn] :police: =D
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Mens rea is an antiquated and much-forgotten concept for many criminal cases, why not this one? [popcorn]
Because gov't is reluctant to take gov't to task for actions that would get a non-gov't-employee citizen hounded to the ends of the Earth.
Vigilantism occurs when gov't does not hold up its end of the deal.
What was the deal? Citizens give up the right to personal vendetta & personal vengeance in return for gov't handing out justice, part of which is punishment (vengeance) for damage done to persons or property.
I'd rather gov't kept up its end of the deal, but I will not fetishize gov't by saying vigilantism is never right. ANd, yes, it will get ugly if the deal is seen to be broken by a goodly number of folks.
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I still do wonder how we as a society got to the point were vigilantism is considered a bad thing.
In all fairness, vigilantism can turn into mob justice pretty fast with little thought to actual evidence or proof.
1. It is a good thing that we do not give up on our justice system too quickly.
2. It is also a good thing IMO that many would be willing to take care of things if events called for it.
3. It is also a given that the govt will not give up its monopoly on justice willingly. Death Wish was just a movie, but the police and politician response was accurate IMO. They didn't give a damn that the city was overrun with crime, but they would move heaven and earth to go after the vigilante. Thankfully things have gotten better since 1974 in most places.
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On a related note, I woke up today to the radio telling me about a man in Oklahoma that reported his wife missing when she and his truck were gone for a couple days, with no notice.
4 days and an expensive (wo)manhunt later, she was found in Corpus Christi, TX, shacked up with some other guy.
The huband got a bill for (undisclosed) tens of thousands of dollars for the cost of the (wo)manhunt, and the woman got arrested for unauthorized use of another person's vehicle. Unknown if the auto title had both of their names on it or not, or the insurance... but whatever.
I become more and more convinced that I really don't need to use the police to resolve any problems in my life.
No doubt. I wonder what sort of charges the husband would've faced had he not reported her missing, and she wound up dead.
Regarding the passage of manhunt costs on to the husband - I am reminded of an argument we had here when the jetliner went down into the Hudson River last year. All parties acted in good faith and the best possible outcome was had, and yet there were those who argued that "someone has to pay".
Vigilantism occurs when gov't does not hold up its end of the deal.
Between taxation, revenue-generating police practices(combined with ever-lower emphasis on actual police work), and the ever-more-complex and contradictory system of laws RevDisk mentioned, I'd say the government long ago lost interest in holding up its end of any "deal".
It's become us against them - not in a revolutionary or existential sense, but the average American is pretty much prey for his government.
The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.
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How is vigilantism that much different that the Criminal inJustice system? =|
Both are mob rule, but one is better organized.
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*nomex underwear ON*
Problem is, I don't think they did anything illegal. Reprehensible, yes, but not illegal.
If the equipment was owned and managed by the school, laws have recognized the owner/manager of equipment's rights to monitor that equipment. Same laws that allow your employer to monitor your web surfing.
Just another example of laws not keeping up with technology, I am afraid.
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*nomex underwear ON*
Problem is, I don't think they did anything illegal. Reprehensible, yes, but not illegal.
If the equipment was owned and managed by the school, laws have recognized the owner/manager of equipment's rights to monitor that equipment. Same laws that allow your employer to monitor your web surfing.
Just another example of laws not keeping up with technology, I am afraid.
Don't worry, the M2 zippo is out of jellied gasoline (for now.)
The problem isn't that they were monitoring the use of the equipment they owned, the problem is they were using the equipment they owned for covert observation of activities that did not involve that equipment, and were doing so in places where a reasonable expectation of privacy is to be had (a person's bedroom). More over (and I don't know if it actually happened, so I'll only discuss the possibility) using that equipment such, and in such a location, opened them up to a variety of other violations of the law, vis-a-vis child pornography charges, if their cameras had happened to snap a few photos while the student was in their room changing their clothes. This being in addition to other violations of the law, such as (actually appropriate in this case) wire tapping (mics built into the laptop) and invasion of privacy.
I don't think the comparison of an employer monitoring the usage of their company's computer systems is as appropriate as would a comparison of an employer putting up their security cameras in grossly inappropriate locations such as the restrooms or fitting rooms of their store. If usage monitoring was truly the intended purpose then key loggers and website history recorders would have been more than sufficient, instead we have remote and surreptitious activation of hardware that allows them to observe what is going on outside of the computer.
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I don't think the comparison of an employer monitoring the usage of their company's computer systems is as appropriate as would a comparison of an employer putting up their security cameras in grossly inappropriate locations such as the restrooms or fitting rooms of their store. If usage monitoring was truly the intended purpose then key loggers and website history recorders would have been more than sufficient, instead we have remote and surreptitious activation of hardware that allows them to observe what is going on outside of the computer.
I would like to think, and I would hope you are right.
I enjoy playing devil's advocate, as you can probably tell.
I hope some judge somewhere figures out a way to make things right.
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I hope some judge somewhere figures out a way to make things right.
Appears to be too late for that in this case :(
Home
School
;)
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If a gov employee can take [nekkid] pictures of your underage daughter, on a laptop she's REQUIRED to have, and there's [apparentlly] no legal means to stop him, why not just shoot him?
So, how much light intensity does it take to permanently damage the typical webcam's sensor? Once that's taken care of, it's just a matter of splicing into the mic line and making a small squealer to run continuously.
That, or making a point of having your kid sit in front of the camera wearing a wookiee suit, repeatedly field-stripping and reassembling a M16.
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So, how much light intensity does it take to permanently damage the typical webcam's sensor? Once that's taken care of, it's just a matter of splicing into the mic line and making a small squealer to run continuously.
That, or making a point of having your kid sit in front of the camera wearing a wookiee suit, repeatedly field-stripping and reassembling a M16.
Do what I do, place a small bit of tape over it. I do that on my personal laptop and my work laptop.
Wookie suits are hot, in summertime.
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The problem with tape is that they said something in one of the articles about doing that as a direct violation of attempting to bypass their "security" check.
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The problem with tape is that they said something in one of the articles about doing that as a direct violation of attempting to bypass their "security" check.
My workplace says the same thing.
They can bite me.
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So, how much light intensity does it take to permanently damage the typical webcam's sensor? Once that's taken care of, it's just a matter of splicing into the mic line and making a small squealer to run continuously.
That, or making a point of having your kid sit in front of the camera wearing a wookiee suit, repeatedly field-stripping and reassembling a M16.
The evil person in me says, if I know the district twerp is checking laptops, break into his house while he's at work, and plant a small camera in his bedroom. Then crack the district's network so whichever webcam is activated, it plays the output of the IT nerd's bedroom cam.
Yes, I know it'd be illegal, but it'd also be righteous. But I don't have kids either. I could very well be less prone to a humerous response if it was my kid they were spying on.
Similarly, the vice principal that started this whole thing with a pic of Mike and Ikes? I'd be outside the next PTA Meeting trying to raise money to hire paparazzi to follow him around and take pics of EVERYTHING he does. After all, if a students behaviour in his bedroom can get him in trouble at school, then anything the administrator does, ever, anywhere, is fair game as well. Eventually he'd do something gross on camera.
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Regarding the passage of manhunt costs on to the husband - I am reminded of an argument we had here when the jetliner went down into the Hudson River last year. All parties acted in good faith and the best possible outcome was had, and yet there were those who argued that "someone has to pay".
I recall that. And since the parties who were the proximate cause of the incident (the birds who flew into the plane's engines) were deceased and there were no apparent heirs or estates with any resources to be tapped, the hue and cry thus fell upon the airline to pay ... even though they were in no way responsible for the incident, and WERE responsible (through the person of their employee, the captain) for saving the passengers' lives.
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*nomex underwear ON*
Problem is, I don't think they did anything illegal. Reprehensible, yes, but not illegal.
If the equipment was owned and managed by the school, laws have recognized the owner/manager of equipment's rights to monitor that equipment. Same laws that allow your employer to monitor your web surfing.
Just another example of laws not keeping up with technology, I am afraid.
Yes, they did do many illegal things. They acted without a) permission from the parents and b) informed consent. Consent is not enough, if they were intentionally misleading or not extremely explicit in their consent agreement. I don't know about fed law, but they violated the hell out of state law. This is Pennsylvania. Not the Soviet Union, not China, not New Jersey, not Cuba. We have the strictest wiretap laws in the country. Even our LE are very, very limited in what they are allowed to record without notification.
And I quote Pa.C.S.A. § 5703 "Interception, disclosure or use of wire, electronic or oral communications" (Part of the Pennsylvania Wiretap Act)
Except as otherwise provided in this chapter, a person is guilty of a felony of the third degree if he:
(1) intentionally intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept any wire, electronic or oral communication;
(2) intentionally discloses or endeavors to disclose to any other person the contents of any wire, electronic or oral communication, or evidence derived therefrom, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through the interception of a wire, electronic or oral communication; or
(3) intentionally uses or endeavors to use the contents of any wire, electronic or oral communication, or evidence derived therefrom, knowing or having reason to know, that the information was obtained through the interception of a wire, electronic or oral communication.
Now a person might say, well, does "electronic communications" include webcams? Why, I'm glad you asked.
"Electronic communication." Any transfer of signs, signals, writing, images, sounds, data or intelligence of any nature transmitted in whole or in part by a wire, radio, electromagnetic, photoelectronic or photo-optical system
A webcam is a photo-optical system that transfers images. Ergo, the school has committed a felony of the third degree if a single photo was taken inside the person's residence without their consent. For any purpose, unless a court order has been issued. Folks don't need to be sued. They need to go to jail. For a very long time. If a government employee conducts illegal wiretapping of citizens of MY state, they are felons, a danger to our citizenry and need to be treated as the criminals they are. In addition, they need to be nailed to the wall as sex offenders if they took a single revealing photo of a minor. Which apparently, they did.
They were kind enough to confess to these crimes as well. Hence why I am so pissed at the feds for covering for them. We had them dead to rights.
The problem with tape is that they said something in one of the articles about doing that as a direct violation of attempting to bypass their "security" check.
More systemic solutions are being rolled out. Mainly, countermeasures in case other schools are doing the same thing. Not just to block photos from being taken, but to prove criminal behavior if it occurs. Again, the only solution to this is to jail the appropriate parties if they violate the law.
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Sometimes I'm glad to be wrong.
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Sometimes I'm glad to be wrong.
Na. In a lot of states, you'd probably be right. Plenty of states have plenty of laws to safeguard perverts, criminals and corrupt officials. We just happened to not be one.
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We recently had two judges sending kids to hell camps for crimes they did not commit.
If I remember correctly, those were privately-owned camps which were giving the judges a commission for every kid they sent. I believe the judges made millions.
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If I remember correctly, those were privately-owned camps which were giving the judges a commission for every kid they sent. I believe the judges made millions.
Yep, usually unofficially known as "hell camps", for obvious reasons. Federal prosecutors tried to give the judges a sweetheart plea bargain. Noticing a trend yet? Federal prosecutors don't like prosecuting government employees who abuse, exploit or harm children. At least in Pennsylvania. Federal judge flipped his lid and told them (judges and prosecutors) to go to hell. There are 48 indictments against Ciavarella and Conahan including racketeering, fraud, money laundering, extortion, bribery and federal tax violations.
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iirc this case got busted open after they tried to bust some kid for drugs when he was just eating candy in his bedroom? What's happened to all the pics ?
Frakin berstards :mad: